[ Caveat emptor. This is just a rap about creativity and its sometimes association with drug use. In it I am neither advocating drugs nor condemning them...just rapping about them over coffee this morning. So try to keep your in-a-twist panties safely up your butt cracks and your ankle-biting dentures in the glass beside the bed. :-) ]
In what is possibly a timely film release, the following article is about a documentary -- punnily called a Dockumentary -- about the player who was infamous for being one of the most in-yer-face "mushroom-cloud-layin' motherfuckers" (to quote Pulp Fiction) ever to hit major league baseball, currently playing at the Sundance Film Festival. It's about Dock Ellis, most famous for having -- and try this one on for size, those of you who admit to some experimentation with Better Living Through Chemistry in your youth -- pitched a major league no-hitter while stoned on LSD. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/05/no-no-a-documentary-on-\ mlb-pitcher-dock-ellis-who-pitched-a-no-hitter-while-tripping-on-acid.ht\ m <http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/05/no-no-a-documentary-on\ -mlb-pitcher-dock-ellis-who-pitched-a-no-hitter-while-tripping-on-acid.h\ tml> l Now compare that to the recent sad news about Philip Seymour Hoffman. Chances are that some of *his* notable performances were done under the influence of drugs, too. Certainly many of our favorite musicians' most famous works were substance-influenced, and I'm not talkin' Jimi Hendrix here, more like Berlioz (opium), Satie (absinthe), Beethoven (alcohol), and an estimated 27% of modern classical musicians who admit to using beta-blockers, Valium, and other drugs to get over their performance anxiety. It all falls into the category of "Go figure" for me. I would not for an instant claim that the drugs or other mind-altering substances "enhanced" these people's performances or "caused" their creativity, but I might be up for them having helped the artists to "release" them. If an artist (or performer of any stripe, including baseball players) has so much shit running around in their heads that it inflates their sense of self and thus blocks the free expression of their creativity, then a little snort, sniff, or gulp of something that helps move that self out of the way may have been of use to them. Actors (including the late PSH, Keith Ledger, and others) may be particularly prone to drug use, because they're *so fuckin' self-absorbed and anxious*. Their entire livelihood -- and thus their ability to exercise their artform -- depends on how they are perceived by the people paying the bills. And in the world of acting, that is *not* the audiences; it's the producers and the "money people" who react to the director's cast suggestions with a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. Having spent some time around actors when living in L.A., there is a "rule of thumb" that seems to be sadly true -- the confident ones get the parts, and the less confident ones don't. This "rule of thumb" encourages narcissism, which is often perceived by others as "charisma," but it also encourages the use of mind-altering substances that keep their fears at bay and allow these actors to *act more confident*, even though they aren't. Most actors I've met are a seething mass of insecurities and doubts, inwardly convinced that every role is going to be their last, and that people are going to figure out that they're really talentless oafs at every moment. As a result, many of them take to drugs that inflate the self, and then allow them to channel that inflated self in their acting. I feel for the bind they find themselves in, because it places them at risk of OD-ing like PSH or Ledger, or of just spinning out of control and having their drug use become public like Robert Downey Jr. Bottom line, as I read the article about Dock Ellis, is that we'll probably *never know* who among our idols in music, writing, and acting are using drugs to keep doing what they do. Some allow their habits to creep over into offscreen or offstage life, and when they do society judges them and tries to make them pariahs. But others just keep on keepin' on, "maintaining," using a few illicit substances to get through the day, or through the next performance, or the next novel. It's been going on since the beginnings of creative effort on this planet, and I suspect it'll keep going on until the end of it. Some will spin out of control and self-destruct, and others will manage to "maintain" and make it through a long career without their "mother's little helpers" ever being discovered. So when it comes to evaluating their worth as artists, I don't think it'll be the drugs or alcohol that will ever be considered the "source" of their creativity, any more than the ludicrous notion that TM could be considered the "source" of the Beatles' creativity (get real...they were already the most famous people on the planet when they heard of TM...and let's face it, the Beatles *never* stopped doing drugs...ANY of them). Similarly, I would imagine that Phil Hoffman was pretty fuckin' stoned during some of his performances. In retrospect, I can detect a few hints of heroin use in his performance in the recent "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire," which was an OK but forgettable performance. But I can also detect them in his portrayal of the tortured priest in "Doubt," and that was a masterpiece. So did the drugs fuck up the former performance, or "cause" the second? My guess is No, in either case.
